GemThoughts

Just this week we read about Blue Nile selling a $300,000 diamond, and over a smartphone.  We wondered about its size and qualifications - just curiosity - but the sale itself came as no surprise.  Blue Nile has been working the loose diamond business now for years, and has amply proved that these nearly commoditized objects are well suited to Internet selling.  After all, can anyone name a company that sells diamonds that went from zero sales to $300 million plus in a handful of years. Still, there are retailers who think the whole thing is a sham and a lie.  I read the comments that appeared on JCK's web site, and was shaking my head over those that came from "deniers."  Oh, they said, this was a marketing stunt, there was no such sale, and certainly not on a smartphone.  How could anyone buy a stone that expensive without looking at it.  One retailer suggested that the buyer got a retailer to bring the stone in, learn all about it, and then bough...

I finally got a look at Forevermark's web site , and everything took forever.  I viewed it on an I-Mac with plenty of speed and memory.  I mention that up front, because this site uses lots of Flash, and it crawls.  Crawls so badly that my browser timed out waiting to load a page.  When it did load, we see a slick, spare site.  The photos are over-Photoshopped, with metal a shade of gray, and diamonds always blue.  Navigation is clumsy.  When looking at collections, for example, I had to click back five or six pages just to get to the point where I can look at another collection.  There is an app available too (click here) , where one can see oneself wearing a piece.  It is a cute gimmick, but not worth the trouble and waiting.  I looked odd wearing a necklace. No prices are shown anywhere, so it is left to the visitor to go to the retailer locator to find a store.  For the moment, the retailer outlets listed are very few....